@BigJohn I’ll be keeping you in my thoughts and prayers and throwing good Junkie vibes your way.

@GJ could also use some of those powerful Junkie vibes, as she’s finally having surgery (on Tuesday) on her ankle that was injured in a car accident over 2 years ago! It’s a pretty invasive surgery and she’s going to be in the hospital for a couple of days and out of commission for several weeks.

Hoping that both of your surgeries go smoothly, without complications and that you both have fast & easy recoveries.

Some of you may know that I used to be a fairly active volleyball player. It was my main source of exercise and a great social outlet for me and my wife, who also played. She has since retired, but I had continued to play, even though I was plagued by recurring back issues. Some of these issues were caused by my being overweight, and in 2012 I embarked on a personal journey to shed the pounds and ease some of the load on my back.

It was a tremendous success. I lost over 30 pounds and was playing some of the best ball I had ever played in my entire life. I was feeling really good. Then, in a pick-up game at lunch, I took a step backward, not realizing the ground was not quite level right there, and jarred my back.

Little did I know that seemingly innocuous injury would be one of the worst I’ve ever had. I don’t know why that particular incident hurt as bad as it did, but within 12 hours, i was writhing in pain, unable to sleep, sit, walk or lie down without pain. Searing lava-like pain flowed down my sciatic nerve, with no respite. I took some days off work, and the pain died down, but now my leg was numb from top to bottom. The pain subsided, but didn’t go away like it normally did in previous incidents.

I decided to go to the doctor finally after 7 years of intermittent issues with my back. I had an MRI and found what was diagnosed as a bulging disk between my L5/S1 vertebrae. Finally, I had a name to my pain.

I was determined to try as much non-invasive treatments as I could find, and over the next 2 years, I tried Physical Therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, injections, inversion therapy and probably a few more. Nothing really worked. Despite my reluctance, I decided this year to look into surgery.

I had another MRI done and had a spinal surgeon look at it. He has upgraded my condition to a herniated disk, which he says he can get rid of by cutting off the herniation, thereby relieving the pressure on my nerve. Unfortunately, he doesn’t think the numbness will ever go away, nor will I likely get back the reflex reaction that I have lost in my ankle.

So here I am. Just today, I got my surgery date. Wednesday, March 4 I go in for what should be minor back surgery. But they have to pull my sciatic nerve out of the way, and cut/chisel off calcified disk right around my spinal cord. There are risks, to be sure. But I also hope there is a strong chance that after 2.5 years of constant nerve pain that has kept me from sleeping well, exercising and doing many things I enjoy, I may able to return to these things.

My worst fear is that I will go through this and there won’t be any change. One possibility is that my nerve has “imprinted” on the pain, and even if the pressure is relieved, I may still feel phantom pain – the same pain and feeling sensations that amputees have.

I’ll be honest – I’m scared. I’ve never had surgery before, and I’m very nervous about what can go wrong. I’m hopeful more than anything else, but I could sure use some good junkie vibes for this. The junkies are a powerful source of good karma, and I would appreciate any you can throw my way.

I am one of those people who was super stoked to hear the Earthcore might be the next project while at Siglerfest. But one thing that has been rattling around my head is the timeline. Originally, Earthcore was pre-Triangle Trilogy and so things like Contagious and Pandemic did not really affect the narrative/plot. But now, especially post Pandemic, I am so curious how it fits in. Pandemic leaves the world pretty well “beat to shit” so I am curious how Earthcore Mining will factor in. I believe that after Pandemic, every book that is in the same Siglerverse really will need to make at least some mention of past events. Anyway, my 2 cents.

So just wondering is it a score mistake or have you left off some important details– week 10 when Becka is QB – her game’s score is 14-13. Except that Arioch scores the game winning field goal with Becka and Ju scoring a TD. So by that it should be 17-13… unless:

1) Becka threw to Ju and then scored a 2 point conversion and Arioc scored 2 field goals